Dead But Not Forgotten
by CKingwill
Summary: My take on if Littlefoot, Cera, Ducky, Spike, and Petrie experienced the extinction of the dinosaurs. Told from Littlefoot's perspective. This was very sad to write.


Earth, 65 million years ago.

There had been telltale warnings of what was going to happen: droughts, earthquakes, and meteor showers. In one particular place, the Great Valley, it was a sprawling paradise surrounded by a dying world: the extinction of the dinosaurs was impending.

For the Great Valley however, some of these warning signs were slowly creeping their way in. Food became scarcer and there were growing conflicts for food and water.

The night sky was lit up: there was a meteor shower occurring. The shower foreshadowed the arrival of an asteroid on collision course with the Earth. The asteroid would strike what is now the Gulf of Mexico.

3,500 kilometers south of the Great Valley, the massive asteroid strikes into the Earth; it lights up the sky so that even those in the Great Valley could see it. For a moment, everything seemed fine. Dinosaurs all over looked up at the light but resumed their daily activities as the light faded. However, the false sense of security was answered by the arrival of the shock waves. The shock waves reached the Great Valley after the light of the impact faded.

Standing up on a hill, exhausted from a long day of play, our 5 heroes, Littlefoot the longneck, Cera the threehorn, Ducky the swimmer, Spike the spiketail, and Petrie the flyer, all witnessed the light of the asteroid impact and the shock waves that followed. They experienced the shock waves firsthand.

Littlefoot and his friends looked at the massive cloud of dust coming inbound towards where they were. They were unknowingly seeing the blast front.

* * *

"Hey Sean, check this out."

Sean, a graduate student in paleontology at Montana State University, walked over to where his colleague and friend, Martin was digging with several others. Sean had just returned from taking a leak so he was eager to see what Martin had found. Martin smiled and stood up.

"Do you see it?" he asked with some excitement.

"See what man?"

"The bones. They're all from different species. We got Apatasaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, Saurolophus, and Pteranodon." Sean peered at the bones closer and realized that Martin was correct.

"What the hell…."

"Weird huh?" remarked Martin. "And they're all juveniles judging by these bones."

"More like depressing" said another graduate student and digger, a young woman named Heather who was in her mid-twenties. "it's almost like… They were huddled together when they all died" she said slowly.

The baffled students continued to look at the cluster of bones with a mixture of awe and sadness. To the best of their knowledge, different dinosaur species didn't intermix. They didn't breed or nothing like that. They could never picture young juvenile members of multiple species playing. Could they be wrong?

* * *

The asteroid hit the Earth with a force equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima bombs.

The ground shook below the dinosaurs' feet.

Littlefoot and his friends barreled down the hill. Their plan was to find their families. Their efforts were futile. The blast front tore across the landscape and ripped into the Great Valley, causing rock falls on all sides of the valley. The gang tried to outrun the blast front but they were swept up into the dust just like all other unsuspecting dinosaurs and other creatures.

Carried for several kilometers, the gang of five were finally deposited into a small pit surrounded by several boulders and fallen trees that somewhat shielded them from the blast front.

The students had dug up all the bones of the juvenile dinosaurs they could find. Heather suggested to the other diggers that they put them off to the side and protect them so that their professor and dig site manager, could look at them. Right now, she, Sean, and Martin were at a local bar in town.

"I can't stop thinking about that find, guys" said Martin.

"If museums have taught me one thing" began Heather. "It's that no species gets this Earth forever. They all die eventually. But…" she trailed off.

"But what?" asked Sean and Martin.

"Someone or something could be digging up our bones someday" said Sean.

* * *

Littlefoot opened his eyes slowly. He was covered in dust and debris. The air around him was choked with dust and he couldn't see very well. He coughed and realized he couldn't speak. The ash was slowly choking him. He crawled out of the rubble and saw that he had several large cuts all over his body.

 _Ducky? Cera? Spike? Petrie? Where are you guys?_ He thought. _Grandpa? Grandma?_ His legs slowly buckled and he felt like he was going to collapse.

He walked a few meters and he found a heap of dinosaurs: his friends. They were all breathing very slowly.

 _No!_ he thought.

Ducky and Spike were huddled together. Their breathing was so shallow and so unnoticeable. They couldn't' even open their eyes but they knew they could see each other.

Petrie was barely breathing. His eyes were open but they stared off blankly. He had gone into shock.

Cera seemed to be the most alert. Littlefoot's first friend couldn't even moan in pain anymore.

His legs gave out. He collapsed and rolled over by his friends. Littlefoot found himself snuggled up to Cera and the others. Littlefoot could just see the pain in her eyes as more ash flooded into her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. He glanced over at Ducky, Spike, and Petrie. Their breathing had ceased. And he was next.

Littlefoot recalled how his mother would comfort him when he had a bad dream. He longed for his mother to appear to wake him from this nightmare he was living.

The ash choked him continuously. Littlefoot felt so much pain that he couldn't even feel it anymore. He couldn't cry. He couldn't even breathe now.

His life seemed to flash before him: meeting his mother and grandparents, his mother dying, meeting all his friends and making it to the Great Valley, raising Chomper, meeting Ali, reuniting with Chomper, facing sharpteeth, finding Saurus Rock, meeting his father and Shorty, and all his other adventures and misadventures with Cera, Ducky, Spike, and Petrie.

He managed to crack a smile. With painful sensations running through his whole body, he cracked a satisfying smile for a split second before the pain overcame him once again.

Suddenly, he had a vision: he and all his friends were happy and well. They were reunited Chomper, Ruby, and even somehow Mo. He found that they were all walking towards a light. That said light grew brighter with each forward step. Soon, his grandparents, his father, Shorty, and Ali appeared alongside him. The final figure surprised Littlefoot the most: it was his mother.

"It is time to move on, Littlefoot" she said softly.

The light flashed brighter as Littlefoot edged closer to it. All around him, his friends and family were smiling. Feeling afraid, Littlefoot edged closer to the light. Soon the light blinded him. Finally, it consumed him.

 _My friends…. We will never be separated. Friends forever..._

The pain hurt even harder. Yet at the same time, it almost seemed to hurt less and less as Littlefoot slipped away. The life support that was the young longneck's immune system finally collapsed.

Littlefoot slowly closed his eyes. His eyes remained shut for good this time.

* * *

Over the course of time, mud would entomb their corpses and the remains would become fossilized for the crew from Montana State University to find them millions of years later.

* * *

The trio of students returned to the dig site.

"What a day!" said Martin. A tremendous find and some beers to top off the night!"

"I heard the professor agreed to my offer" said Sean.

"What's that?" asked Martin.

"We're going to put these skeletons on display together; once they're fully built. Even in death, it'll look like they're together."

"That's so…. Touching" said Martin. He almost looked like he was going to cry. At the mention of this, an idea popped into Heather's head.

"Now I know what I wanted to say earlier" declared Heather. "No species lasts forever. But with the bones we find, they will never be forgotten."

And she was right. These bones would tell a story. A story of how a certain group of dinosaurs lived together as friends. Their friendship has been solidified in rock. Never to be forgotten.


End file.
